Patient safety remains the focus in the management of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in the Gulf Cooperation Council, according to an article on the Zawya website. Health experts are calling for hospital engineers to integrate infection prevention in their designs to help prevent emerging and re-emerging viruses.

"The top patient safety dilemmas in 2014 are lack of infection prevention and control, as well as environmental hygiene. In particular, hand hygiene is still suboptimal in many healthcare facilities in the region contributing to the spread of superbugs, and emerging viruses to patients consequently jeopardizing their safety," said Dr Mushira Enani, the head of the infectious diseases section, King Fahad Medical City, Saudi Arabia.

"Many hospitals within the GCC region lack the availability of negative pressure rooms and HEPA filters to deal with the surge of airborne respiratory infection."

Read the article.